Ending her residency at Redbase Foundation Yogyakarta, Citra Sasmita hold her solo exhibition entitled Under The Skin. This exhibition is the final presentation of Citra’s residency in Redbase Foundation Yogyakarta for approximately three months.

"Amidst the rapid progress of democratic practices and human rights struggles in Indonesia, the phenomenon of marginalization of women in form of discrimination, exploitation and injustice is still unavoidable. The luck of contemporary women who now have a much greater chance of equal rights with men, especially in areas such as education, employment, and social relationships, often clashing with patriarchal-cultural hegemony that has been ingrained in social life.Patriarchal culture is a classical perspective to perceive the existence of women, where the role of men is preferred and considered to have higher authority than women. Superior and inferior stereotypes attached to each gender are accepted and passed into social construction. Such social construction then gains unbalanced pattern of relations between men and women, both within the social, cultural, political, and legal systems." as written by Vina Puspita on the exhibition introduction.

Citra Sasmita, a female artist born in Tabanan, Bali, who concentrates her work on women's issues. Her awareness as Balinese women whogrew up in the middle of patriarchal culture, gave rise to the criticality of the system which has been subordinating, even to ignore the role and formation of women's identity. Through a visual language enriched in symbols, Citra elaborates the issues of identity, stigma and sexuality narrated through the image of the female body. The idea of voicing sacrifice, struggle, and hope, this time packed in her third solo exhibition, entitled "Under The Skin".

The opportunity to reside and live in Yogyakarta since December 2017 has introduced her to various situations and people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. The diversity and distinctiveness of Javanese culture with Bali that she experienced, a little more influenced her works perspective. If in some series of previous works Citra tends to read women from aspect of independence and social construction, in this exhibition she is trying to raise the power of women in the society.

During her exploration through the streets of Yogyakarta, Citra was captivated by the rush of traditional markets. The market that has been a part of every household’s morning, becomes an interesting location to be observed. Through observation in these traditional markets, Citra found hidden values that she could explore further. Among the narrow labels attached to women, for example, that the kitchen is the place of women; mother should go to market (not to office); and so on, the real marketplace becomes a space to meet and work with the strong women. Space where they also establish a mutual and empowering relationship, between the seller with the buyer, or between fellow sellers and buyers. On the other hand, a market that is undoubtedly dominated by women, becomes a real tool for the role of women in the wheels of the economy.

On this occasion, Citra Sasmita featured ten recent works she created during his residency. Six of them are paintings, three of them are on canvas and three other are on leather. In addition to painting, Citra made three installations and one video installation. One of the installations is made of pineapple fiber braided like 360 cm long hair. This hair is aimed as analogy to Drupadi's hair, a figure of a tough and independent woman in the epic Mahabharata who dared to maintain her pride.

The hair, meat and skin symbols found in Citra's works are addressed to describe the connection, attachment, sacrifice and self-defense of women. The idea can be traced, for example, to the works of theLast Embrace paintings that speak of relationships and sacrifices. Another work that is a critique of autobiotry as well as activator, is Genealogy of Silence. In the work depicted a woman wrapped in cloth, sitting upright on an old chair. Her expression was unscathed, with braided hair wrapped around his right arm. Beside her, the woman's hair was attached to a collection of faces and sheets of flesh. Through this work, Citra tells us about silence culture, which is silence, passiveness and woman's acceptance of its condition, accepted and believed to be ingrained.